


As a Woman Knows the Open Sea

by wheredwellthe_brave_atheart



Category: Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies)
Genre: AU, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-10
Updated: 2015-11-10
Packaged: 2018-04-30 22:26:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5181926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wheredwellthe_brave_atheart/pseuds/wheredwellthe_brave_atheart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"She opened her sharp eyes and rocked forward on not-quite-human toes, feeling so intimately the pull of the waves breaking on the edge of the beach, yanking her towards them, beguiling as any siren's song. </p><p>"If you lose yourself," Will had whispered as they'd embraced before his departure, "let me know, and I'll come and find you."</p><p>She had promised him just the same."</p><p>AU where Elizabeth becomes Calypso.</p>
            </blockquote>





	As a Woman Knows the Open Sea

**Author's Note:**

> This is a work of fan fiction using characters from Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean universe. I do not claim ownership over the word or any characters used. I am not profiting in any way from this work, it is my own invention and for entertainment only, and it is not purported to be a part of Disney's official storyline.
> 
> This AU has been kicking around my head for quite some time - the much longer, in-canon version of Elizabeth and Will's life throughout those ten years, with Jack and Barbossa and Norrington, is still in progress, but this is a self-contained AU too inticing for me to ignore :) Either way, Elizabeth earned her crown as the Pirate King for good reason. 
> 
>  
> 
> "A woman knows the face of the man she loves as a sailor knows the open sea." - Honore de Balzac.

With millennia stretched before her, Elizabeth tries not to look back at her past too often. 

If she were to admit to any regrets, she would be hard-pressed to explain exactly what they would be, for all her most difficult choices remain the ones of which she is most proud. 

But she knows she still sometimes feels an aching emptiness when she considers the loss of her human life, of the mortal path she would never walk with Will. 

Her husband, the immortal Captain of sea-faring souls, and she, his wife, turned goddess of the sea. 

Sao-Feng had seen it in her. And Norrington, and Barbossa, and Jack. So had Tia Dalma - though really, when she thought about it, that had probably been more of a prophetic knowledge; a foresight different than the intuition that had breathed from the Singapore pirate Lord's dying lips; that had laid in Barbossa's old eyes; in James's guilty heart; and on Jack's teasing lips as each man had sought to define her, and had found her likeness in Calypso. 

In retrospect, it seems quite fitting. Will had never been drawn to the pirate's life, not in the way she had - his allure was the camaraderie, and adventure, too, but mostly the honour and righteousness that was strung up in their particular causes. 

But she had always felt the sea in her bones, and had longed for its freedom and power. Had always heard it's song threatening to engulf her like a wave crashing over a beach. 

...

When Will had been killed, she had felt her mortal heart rip itself apart. It was an unseeing, all-encompassing grief - she had been blinded by it, salty tears had choked her lungs, and she had felt a terrible fury burn under utmost fear. 

Then Jack had helped Will stab the heart. 

And the momentary relief had paved way for an anguish that sank heavy in her soul when she realized the true weight of this sacrifice. That theirs was now a future of separation and loneliness. Two lives of heartbreak; her own spent a widow, mourning her not-dead husband, and his stretched into limitless days of ferrying souls, a reluctant Captain. Two lives wasted. 

She had screamed her frustrations overboard, all her bitterness and spite and rage pouring into the roiling ocean, pounding at the rail with raw fists. 

"What did I ever do to deserve this?" she'd shrieked, with the Dutchman swirling under the waters below. "What great crime did I commit, to have my life chosen for me? To spend my life watching the skies for a glimpse of green?" she'd howled, as rain continued to lash at the deck. "What do you want from me?"

The wind had howled back - the woman she knew as Tia Dalma had swirled into form, slipping from the water to stand barefoot on the heaving deck. 

"I have seen your destiny, child," she'd purred, circling Elizabeth as a shark would its wary prey. "And that of your love - aye, him too, I seen his fate."

Elizabeth had thrown back her weary shoulders and spread her stance. "And?" she'd demanded. "What of it? What are you offering?"

Calypso had smiled, her tattooed lips revealing rows of oyster-pearl teeth. 

...

He's dealing with a sunken merchant ship a few kilometers off Barbados when she hears him call for her. 

She's exploring a dark trench beneath southeastern Asia, through the eyes of a school of silver cuttlefish, but she thinks it's been a while since she's seen him so she rises with the wind to seek out his ship. 

When she arrives, he's leaning over the upper railing, facing the rising sun. His crew are no doubt belowdeck, as he stands alone on an empty ship. 

Her feet touch down on a sea chest by his shoulder. 

"Hello, darling," she says blithely. "Sorry I'm so late." 

He smiles without turning. "Out on the town again, Mrs Turner?" he asks, and her laugh ripples the ocean around them as she pictures the life he's painting. 

She steps down to stand behind him and wraps her arms around his waist. "I've missed you," she whispers, pressing her cheek against his back. No heartbeat echoes through his ribcage. Then again, it doesn't always in hers, either. 

She feels him hope - "Truly?" he asks, and it hurts that he doubts. But last time she hadn't remembered to tell him; her mind had been on a tsunami over Japan's coast. 

"Always," she promises, and he finally turns in her embrace to look her in the face, his eyes full of all the things they have to leave unsaid. 

(I wish it could be different.

I sometimes forget you. 

I don't want it to be different. 

I never forget you.)

But she's never been afraid of drowning in his eyes. 

They kiss - electricity builds in the humid island air. 

She forgot how beautiful he is, how perfect it feels to have his calloused hands on her sun-tanned skin, to feel her salt-bleached hair whip around their faces until he smiles against her lips. How real it all is, how it makes her ache with desperation and guilt and love, being here in one piece with her husband. 

Her physical manifestation reflects her human form - she has no idea if this makes her an anomaly among immortals, but she cannot bring herself to care. Maintaining a solid form requires tremendous effort - it is not easy, she finds, to bottle her whole being into a mortal's shape. She feels constrained, like her skin is sealing her in, like she's made of wax. Or perhaps a corset. 

But she does it for Will, and it's easier.

She feels differently, now. When before, her love for him felt too large to be contained in her human heart, her immortal soul is full of hidden sections and she is so vast, so unfathomable, that she can keep her love for him in only one part of herself, a cove amidst an ocean, an island paradise at the eye of a hurricane. 

And she does. But then the Elizabeth who returns to him remembers when she loved him as a woman. It's the goddess who forgets. 

So she moans into his mouth, wild and wanton because it's been far too long since they've been together. He lifts her roughly, his hands wide against the backs of her strong legs. She's wrapping them around his hips, fingers gripping the rough cotton of his shirt, when an errant wave sends the ship pitching and they lose balance, slamming into the rail, his body hard against her own. 

"Will-" she keens, their forms still entwined, and he knows. 

"I have some time," he gasps into her mouth. "A few hours-"

"Me, too," she nods frantically. "Let's go- that island-"

He groans as she threads her fingers through his hair, gripping him tight. 

They vanish together - their magic mingling and leaving no trace in the wind. 

...

In the very early years of the curse - a time so long ago now Will struggles sometimes to remember - they had fought terrifically, the seas screaming with rage, his ship moaning in agony. Everything was too much, and it was too easy to blame the other for each of their burdens. 

Elizabeth hadn't been able to bear the thought of remaining mortal while he sailed among the dead, but her choice merely ensured a different kind of entrapment, which neither of them had first calculated. 

Will feels his curse like a brand across his bones, something searing the skin like the molten iron in his forge all those lifetimes ago. He bears it with honour, but it weighs heavy on his immortal soul. 

(He had forgotten, really, that he had never truly wanted to be a pirate.) 

But he does still marvel, even after decades have passed, at the miraculous sights he and his crew behold. The strange worlds in between life and death are vibrant and enticing, and the souls themselves carry an aching beauty that Will never lets himself grow indifferent to. He strives to uphold his duty while remaining reverent of the wonders all around him, the wonders of which he is an integral aspect.

But Elizabeth was ever-hungry for the horizon, she was thirsty to swallow all the sea and eager to bear that weight, and she is brilliant enough that Will thinks he may yet die of it. 

And now, they've learned they can't expect to be either of them captured by the other. So instead they visit as often as they can, when each of their domains can spare them. Not as often as either of them would like. He gathers her close, until the warmth seeps from her into him, until he feels alive again, and her kisses taste of salt and wind, and he loves her even in the absence of his heartbeat.

...

They spend a few indulgent hours on that island off Barbados, until Will is unable to ignore the incessant tug of his ship and her call to duty, and he tears his mouth away from her skin. 

"I have to get back," he murmurs, the skin of his face rough as sandpaper against her inner thigh. "I can't very well leave the captaining to the likes of my crew," he jokes. 

Elizabeth's grin is lazy and smooth as silk. "Your father is part of that crew, as I recall."

"Well, you're just proving my point, now, aren't you?" 

She laughs and scoops up a handful of sand, showering him in the fine grains. 

"You're getting quite as restless as a certain Captain Jack," he teases, sparing a moment's thought for their old friend. 

She snorts derisively. "Hardly," she says, brushing the sand from her hands. "Jack has the two of us keeping him in check. He's gone soft in his dotage, if you cared to recall. Chasing the Fountain of Youth."

He grins, but rolls away from her, all too abruptly, and laces up his boots reluctantly. 

She interrupts his efforts, running an index finger down the jagged scar on his chest. "So soon," she whispers, without any blame. 

He nods, and catches her hand. "Until the next time, Mrs. Turner," he kisses her knuckles, "Captain Swann," he presses his lips to hers, "Calypso." 

She shivers without cold. "How many times must I ask you to call me 'Elizabeth'?" she teases fondly, remembering a girl who loved a boy, two people so very young and brave. 

He sighs. "At least once more. So there's always a reason for me to see you again."

She cradles his face in her hands and kisses him farewell. 

"Until next time," she promises, and he vanishes, tugged back to the Dutchman like a wave pulled out to sea at the will of the moon. 

When Will goes where even she cannot follow, she occupies herself as only a goddess of the sea can – inhabiting the oceans and exploring the world beneath the waves; drowning sailors and carrying ships. She makes the seas rage when she screams for his nearness, and when she remembers his watching eyes and steady hands she makes the waters calm and soothing, a lullaby for sailors at night.

...

When Elizabeth had accepted Tia Dalma's proposal, she had braced herself, and the change was immediate and despairing - through the madness in her head, the unbearable buzzing throughout her entire being, she felt the raw power coursing through her, twisting and shrieking and begging to be released, and it was enough to send her flying. 

Then, alone and quite free, she wandered on the shore of a tropical island, so very like the one Jack had been marooned on all those years ago. The air was heavy and warm, but she knew once the orange sun in the distance sank underneath the curling waves, she would be left on a frigid beach. She imagined the sand turning cool and sugar-coated, the rustle of wind across the tall trees replacing the humid air that was currently wrapped around her being like a thick blanket. She imagined how night would fall on Will's ship - the sails going slack, dusk settling over the cam sea, the pitch and fall of the creaking deck whistling through the air. 

She opened her sharp eyes and rocked forward on not-quite-human toes, feeling so intimately the pull of the waves breaking on the edge of the beach, yanking her towards them, beguiling as any siren's song. 

"If you lose yourself," Will had whispered as they'd embraced before his departure, "let me know, and I'll come and find you."

She had promised him just the same. 

Now, she wrapped her arms around herself and buried her feet steady in the sand, breathing in her immortality and facing her new horizon.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Let me know what you thought :)


End file.
